In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas meets Laura Spinney, author of Proto: How One Language Went Global, the story of the Proto-Indo-European language and its descendants, which are spoken today by half of humanity.
Laura explains:
How, where, and among whom Proto-Indo-European emerged
How Indo-European split into English, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Greek, Latin-derived Romance languages, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic tongues
How linguists reconstruct an unwritten prehistoric language through sound laws, comparative vocabulary and ancient texts
Why ancient DNA has transformed the debate over Indo-European origins by restoring migration to the centre of the story
Who the Yamnaya were, and how mobile pastoralists north of the Black Sea spread language through cattle, wagons, dairy and steppe mobility
How a small number of steppe migrants may have transformed Europe’s languages through disease, prestige, violence, intermarriage and social networks
Why Tocharian, Sanskrit and Persian reveal extraordinary Indo-European journeys from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to China, India and Iran
How ‘Aryan’ began as a real Indo-Iranian self-description before being distorted by racial nationalism and Nazi pseudoscience
Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/
Find Laura on X: https://x.com/lfspinney
And on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/laurainparis.bsky.social
And on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laura.spinney
Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
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